It's not like I have a choice but this is definitely the year where Gase better show something or else I'll be livid if they don't fire him (not that the organization cares, of course).
No more excuses!

With that schedule, I was thinking/hoping we'd get somewhere between 7-10 wins going into last year. (I realize that's a very wide range btw). So record-wise, I guess 7 was reasonable. However, it's more than just that. I wanted to see Gase surprise us and have the team play much more competitive than would've been expected in some of our losses. Parcells' first year here was the kind of blueprint I was hoping for (where, even when we lost, we were a tough out).
I realize there weren't great coaching options out there btw (I can't remember if Urban Meyer was available at that time but, if so, I would've offered him the Gruden contract to try to convince him).
As far as Gase getting credit for giving autonomy to GW, I wonder about that. I would have to assume that part of his deal when he signed here was autonomy with the defense.
I don't think I wanted Matt Ruhle btw. I guess let's see what happens with him this year. I wouldn't have been thrilled with that hire though.

For the record, I didn't want McCarthy and I even said I would've preferred Gase over him. As far as Gase, if his ruthlessness is the reason we have Joe D (who I'm a huge fan of) then I'm very grateful to him for that. The things I wrote in my previous post, however, were only in reference to him as a head coach. I still feel like he did a bad job last year. Our schedule was as easy as it could've been (in terms of both opponents and travel) but he only got to 7-9. Yes we had a very tough early season schedule and Sam did have mono so there are some legit built-in excuses. But I never felt like he did any kind of great job to "almost steal a game that we had no business being in" or anything like that.
As far as our 6-2 2nd half, I credit GW as much or more than I do Gase for that. And as we all know, GW is here because of the Johnsons, not because of Gase. I'll eat a little crow on that btw because I thought that was a case of the Johnsons meddling. I wanted our HC to bring in his own staff (or at worst, our GM to be involved rather than the owner). It does seem to me right now though that GW was a smart hire.

Where is the Gase love coming from? Yes the team wasn't great last year but, when he took the job, there was still a lot of potential for this team (young promising potential FQB plus $100M to spend in FA). Plus I'm pretty sure Gase didn't exactly have a ton of options after he got himself fired in Miami for apparently mouthing off to the owner.
You point out 6-2 down the stretch but you're ignoring 1-7 to start. Yes we had a tough schedule early last year and yes Sam was out with mono. But even when Sam came back, we still lost to the winless Fish and Bengals. And the Bengal game was a "win and we have an outside shot at the playoffs" game. To me, Gregg Williams' defense came together better than Gase and the offense (as let's be honest, Gase is, for the most part, a glorified OC while GW mainly runs the defense).
I haven't seen any reason to be too thrilled about Gase (and I'd have been completely fine - if not happy - if he got canned after last year) but I'm not saying there's no chance he can get things turned around. Obviously the NFL is a difficult game for the average Joe to really understand so I'll give him another year. I'm not particularly optimistic about him though and I still don't see why you and SAR are convinced that he's the solution. I'd like to see Gase start to "do more with less" (like GW did with the defense). To me, that's one of the signs of a quality HC.